Books Poetry

Month: April 2012

After the incense, whisky , music, lamplight,
after we’d waited for the world to turn a quarter revolution,
when you had kissed the places that you found,
stopped short of loving
what was the unknown message that we’d yet to learn?
After you’d offered me a future apple tree’d in brilliance
some exotic paradise where life is clear blue lagoon,
when I’d checked my heart to find if it was beating
the way I knew you needed it to .
Outside the opaque window Venus rose between us
visible for an instant then lost in clouded conflict,
there was absolutely nothing left to do.
After touching hidden corners where the creases curled
after wanting some solution to the sadness that we felt
after tearing clotted arteries where the old blood lay;
when I tried to hear the question there was only empty footsteps
the shadow of oblivion where I could not stay.

Share this:

Like this:

Bats fly low in Brixton sunset; we’ve talked about truth now
my mind recites it’s own quotations creates it’s own past:
you linger like green powdered mould in the recesses of my brain
saturating blood vessels scuttling into drab corners,
a dried corpse who chooses to crawl nightly beneath my sheets
leaving me indigo and remembering how, how it used to be.

I spend the day in recovery, shock edging my curled lips
waiting for the next adrenaline fix.

Doves strut Dulwich gardens, patrolling sun hats and Pimms gentility,
eyeing joggers red legged on prim park grass,
behind the blinds lies explode like party sparklers,
the menage a trois becomes six or seven and all is exhaustion
in the endless sputnik search for “the one “.
We are discarded condoms on a battlefield of adulation,
veterans in an air brushed drama where no one is in control.

We spend the day in recovery, shock spilling through the credit cards
lodging in Porsche seats, as the children turn their eyes away.

Parrots hurl insults into a taut tropical night,
and beneath the air- conditioning tourists ply tight skin with balm
as the rain forest tumbles under another colonial judder.
The streets of Phuket double as Marbella, clubbers club:
all is inordinately anaesthetised into a concrete corporate conglomerate.

There is no way to recovery, shock sidling from the side walks,
sweating between the young girls thighs, falling from the lines of ever open palms:

Somewhere in the universe the small particle which might be you,might remember,
take me from my nightly sojourns unseal this equation with a smile,

Share this:

Like this:

You told the story,
in the dying light of a spring evening
how she was so so hot for you, you’d
left marks on the back seats of cars
locked each other for hours
in anonymous hotel rooms.

“Doing it” was what you did together
in bars, under escalators:
I wide eyed listening to the history
of your lack lustre couplings
saw her waiting behind net curtains,
Nintendo -ing her children
sending her husband on endless errands
to make way for your waves.

I suggested it was love,
“in love with my dick more like”,
I drew back from my coca cola,
watching your hand pat my knee
as you tried to light a spark in me,
begging for heavenly intervention.

You were dark, so dark
sometimes the light played tricks
you disappeared,I had to look closely to
find your eyes,and the gentleness
of your presence seemed to deny
your bestial behaviour.
You were a symptom of my week
this crazy city monsooning itself
in the first glow of April sunshine.

Share this:

Like this:

Trees pale reflected
in dark glow of meadow
flooded
colours of a lifetime
etched against your face
line by line I run my finger
down each crease
ask you to remember
how they came to be,
share with me the years we’ve
been apart.

Autumns forty three
or more you first took
breath upon
this earth when I
was still a beating star
in heaven’s itinerary,
maybe I watched you fall to form,
you grow at mother’s breast
those far flung years ago
how would I know
we’d come to this?

Day traces day
against this end of year
you walk by tinted lake
and I am here in city’s bustle;
but still each moment in mind’s eye
I touch the creases
kiss the contours
shed the tears, and yet again
I wait,
like autumn trees devoid of leaves
who break

Share this:

Like this:

Blossom’s dripping blood for you
the colour of your tears
Ceanothus nearly blue
trees are budding spooky green
like something from my
midnight dreams but where are you?

I saw a girl the other day
her blonde hair halo’d
just the way yours used to be
she could have been a replica
your daughter that was never born
if only you had stayed with me.

There’s talk of Jesus and his plight
but no one talks of you:
that dreadful night when terror hurled
you from the bridge to fall on broken ground.
Death appeared in pale moonlight,
he cut you down to size.

It must be twenty years or more
since we last spoke and yet
this spring is freaking out for you
Iris raise their violet heads a
delicate brand of excellence
to show me life goes on.

Louisa I can never tell
how much I loved you and
the day I heard you’d run from us
was filled with disbelief: others
mourn a man they never knew
dead a thousand years gone by.

This Easter makes me think of you
golden hair and boyish stance
our laughter never fades;
for me the blossom falls for you
in fragile swathes of make believe
it sings to me, our love song.